Gearing Up for Holiday Sales: 2021 Trends and Opportunities

Starting a business always sounds fun when you’re casually chatting with friends and family over drinks. You’re brainstorming and writing ideas down on napkins. There’s energy and excitement in the air. 


If you wake up the next morning, still jazzed to start this new venture, ask yourself these seven questions before you make the leap and become an entrepreneur. 

1. Why are you starting the business? 

For money or passion? Successful entrepreneurs are rarely motivated by money, but it’s an incentive that can keep fueling your passion. 


If you have pride and believe in your work, your potential clients will sense it! 

2. Can you start it as a side hustle?

While working a full-time job, can you slowly start your own business? This path protects you from greater losses, but it also reduces the rate at which you can grow your business. 


When you work full-time on your business, you’ll accomplish your goals faster. But moving slower allows you to make adjustments to your goals without major financial impacts. 

3. Do you want a partner?

Or should you go it alone? Having a partner is great—until it isn’t. You’ll need to be honest with yourself and do some soul-searching to see if you would make a great partner. 


Do you really need a partner (someone to contribute their expertise, money, and skills), or do you just want someone to hold your hand on this scary new adventure? 

4. Is what you are offering needed?

Are you solving a pain point? Do your research to see if there are offerings like yours on the market. Are they successful? 


If your business idea is truly unique, try sending surveys to potential clients to determine if they’d buy what you are offering and what they’d be willing to pay. Speaking of clients… 

5. Who are your potential clients? 

What are the demographics? Who would you want as a client? Do they share your ideals? Where would you find these people—online, in person? Why would they want to work with you?

6. How much money are you willing to invest? 

Will you bootstrap it? Get investor support? Every business requires an initial investment, whether it’s buying furniture for an office or creating a digital presence. The Small Business Association offers loans for small businesses at every stage. 

7. Are you willing to work long hours for little money? 

How about losing sleep over issues in your business? Are you ready to be exhausted and exhilarated at the same time? Owning a business isn’t for the faint of heart. It requires grit to pursue entrepreneurship and keep chasing it. And that requires passion and perseverance. 


Things will go wrong (sometimes horribly), but they’ll also go really well. In those moments when it seems like all things are moving in the right direction, you’ll have a feeling like no other. When you experience this feeling, you’ll feel energized to continue on to your next goal. 


If you’re thinking about starting a new business, First Steps Financial is here to help you. We can set up your QuickBooks Online file properly to help manage your finances and keep you updated on revenues and expenses. Contact us today!

Our Latest Insight

Growth Impacts: Why This Relationship Breaks Down at $2M to $15M (And What It Costs You)

By Alisa McCabe • October 15, 2026
​There is a frustrating stage of growth when the business makes more money and becomes harder to run. You expected growth to create leverage. Instead, your calendar is fuller and decisions take longer. Projects compete for the same people. Expenses become harder to explain. Accounting needs more information from Operations. Operations needs more information from Accounting. And the accounting systems that carried you to $2 million were not built for $15 million. Nothing necessarily looks broken. That is what makes this stage so deceptive. The processes that got you here may still work. Your people may still be good. Your customers may still be buying. What changed is the weight your existing structure is being asked to carry. At $2 million, you can still personally compensate for the gaps. Somewhere on the road to $5 million, $10 million, or $15 million, that stops being possible. The business did not suddenly become dysfunctional. It outgrew its dependence on informal coordination.  Part 5 of a 5-part series on the COO-Accounting relationship

Fixing It: How to Build the COO-Accounting Relationship Your Business Is Missing

By Alisa McCabe • October 12, 2026
If Article 3 felt a little too familiar, your first instinct may be to call a meeting. You tell Operations and Accounting they need to communicate better. That will not fix it. The five warning signs were never personality problems. They were signs that your accounting systems and routines were never intentionally built around how these two functions work together. People cannot follow a structure that does not exist. Accounting cannot inform decisions they do not know are being considered. Your COO cannot use financial information they cannot access in time. The fix is not complicated. That does not mean it happens naturally. Most of what you need to build will feel almost obvious. Recurring conversations. Clear handoffs. Shared definitions. Access to the right information. This is not glamorous work. That is probably one reason it gets overlooked. For the first few months, you may have to follow up constantly. People will forget. Meetings will get moved. Someone will make a decision and skip the handoff. Then something starts to change. The follow-up becomes unnecessary. Information moves without you. Problems get caught earlier. Eventually the results look effortless from the outside. They were not. You built the relationship that made them possible.  ​ Part 4 of a 5-part series on the COO-Accounting relationship

Five Warning Signs Your COO and Accounting Aren’t Talking

By Alisa McCabe • September 28, 2026
Article 2 ended with a question. What would you actually see first if this relationship started breaking down inside your business? Here is the answer. You would see five things. If you are like most owners reading this, you are already looking at two or three of them. None of the five announces itself as a communication problem. Each one shows up as friction inside your accounting systems, wearing a perfectly reasonable disguise. That is the difficulty. On the surface, none of these looks like a broken relationship. Each looks like something else entirely. A busy month. A tough quarter. A personality difference between two people who were never going to be friends anyway. Every one of them gets explained away the first time you see it. That is exactly what makes them expensive. This article does not fix any of it. Article 4 does that. The job here is naming what is already sitting in front of you. Most owners walk past these signs for years without recognizing what they are looking at.  ​ Part 3 of a 5-part series on the COO-Accounting relationship